Aberystwyth University A geomorphology based reconstruction of ice volume distribution at the Last Glacial Maximum across the Southern Alps of New Zealand James, William H. M.; Carrivick, Jonathan L.; Quincey, Duncan Joseph; Glasser, Neil Published in: Quaternary Science Reviews DOI: 10.1016/j.quascirev.2019.06.035 Publication date: 2019 Citation for published version (APA): James, W. H. M., Carrivick, J. L., Quincey, D. J., & Glasser, N. (2019). A geomorphology based reconstruction of ice volume distribution at the Last Glacial Maximum across the Southern Alps of New Zealand. Quaternary Science Reviews, 219, 20-35. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.quascirev.2019.06.035 Document License CC BY General rights Copyright and moral rights for the publications made accessible in the Aberystwyth Research Portal (the Institutional Repository) are retained by the authors and/or other copyright owners and it is a condition of accessing publications that users recognise and abide by the legal requirements associated with these rights. • Users may download and print one copy of any publication from the Aberystwyth Research Portal for the purpose of private study or research. • You may not further distribute the material or use it for any profit-making activity or commercial gain • You may freely distribute the URL identifying the publication in the Aberystwyth Research Portal Take down policy If you believe that this document breaches copyright please contact us providing details, and we will remove access to the work immediately and investigate your claim. tel: +44 1970 62 2400 email: [email protected] Download date: 07. Oct. 2021 Quaternary Science Reviews 219 (2019) 20e35 Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Quaternary Science Reviews journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/quascirev A geomorphology based reconstruction of ice volume distribution at the Last Glacial Maximum across the Southern Alps of New Zealand * William H.M. James a, , Jonathan L. Carrivick b, Duncan J. Quincey b, Neil F. Glasser c a School of Geography and Leeds Institute for Data Analytics, University of Leeds, Leeds, West Yorkshire, LS2 9JT, UK b School of Geography and water@leeds, University of Leeds, Leeds, West Yorkshire, LS2 9JT, UK c Department of Geography and Earth Sciences, Aberystwyth University, Wales, SY23 3DB, UK article info abstract Article history: We present a 3D reconstruction of ice thickness distribution across the New Zealand Southern Alps at the Received 11 February 2019 Last Glacial Maximum (LGM, c. 30e18 ka). To achieve this, we used a perfect plasticity model which Received in revised form could easily be applied to other regions, hereafter termed REVOLTA (Reconstruction of Volume and 26 June 2019 Topography Automation). REVOLTA is driven by a Digital Elevation Model (DEM), which was modified to Accepted 28 June 2019 best represent LGM bed topography. Specifically, we removed contemporary ice, integrated offshore bathymetry and removed contemporary lakes. A review of valley in-fill sediments, uplift and denudation was also undertaken. Down-valley ice extents were constrained to an updated geo-database of LGM ice Keywords: fi Geomorphology limits, whilst the model was tuned to best- t known vertical limits from geomorphological and 3 Glacial geochronological dating studies. We estimate a total LGM ice volume of 6,800 km , characterised pre- Glaciation dominantly by valley style glaciation but with an ice cap across Fiordland. With a contemporary ice Glaciology volume of approximately 50 km3, this represents a loss of 99.25% since the LGM. Using the newly created Quaternary ice surface, equilibrium line altitudes (ELAs) for each glacier were reconstructed, revealing an average Southern pacific ELA depression of approximately 950 m from present. Analysis of the spatial variation of glacier-specific ELAs and their depression relative to today shows that whilst an east-west ELA gradient existed during the LGM it was less pronounced than at present. The reduced ELA gradient is attributed to an overall weakening of westerlies, a conclusion consistent with those derived from the latest independent climate models. © 2019 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). 1. Introduction conditions. Glacial reconstruction in New Zealand presents significant The New Zealand Southern Alps is a key site for glacial recon- challenges as the extreme relief and high precipitation of parts of struction studies and is one of only three mid-latitude southern the Southern Alps gives rise to a complex yet large-scale system hemisphere locations at which extensive Pleistocene glaciation (Chinn et al., 2014). To date, the work by Golledge et al. (2012) is the occurred. Furthermore, the geomorphological record of the Last only attempt at a regional reconstruction of LGM ice thickness, and Glacial Maximum (LGM) in New Zealand has excellent spatial and that was achieved using the Parallel Ice Sheet Model (PISM). They temporal coverage (Barrell et al., 2011) and has long been recog- used a Digital Elevation Model (DEM) and climate parameter inputs nized for its potential for improving understanding of former cli- (spatially uniform scaling of contemporary conditions) to best fit matic conditions via glacier geometry reconstruction (e.g. Porter, the areal ice limits delimited by Barrell (2011) (Fig. 1). Some rela- 1975b). LGM ice thickness has previously been reconstructed for tively large (tens of kilometers) discrepancies must be noted individual catchments in New Zealand (e.g. Putnam et al., 2013) and however, where the PISM was unable to recreate known down- at the regional scale (Golledge et al., 2012), although uncertainty valley limits derived from field-based observations and indepen- still exists regarding the extent, timing and associated climatic dently dated landforms. Specifically, in comparison to the mapping of Barrell (2011), Golledge et al. (2012) underestimated ice extent in the eastern outlets including the Rakaia and Waimakariri (Fig. 1). * As an alternative to top-down climate models, a number of Corresponding author. ‘ ’ E-mail address: [email protected] (W.H.M. James). bottom-up, topography based techniques have been developed for https://doi.org/10.1016/j.quascirev.2019.06.035 0277-3791/© 2019 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). W.H.M. James et al. / Quaternary Science Reviews 219 (2019) 20e35 21 Fig. 1. Location map of regions referred to in this study and previous delineations of LGM ice extent. Note the mismatch between extents estimated by Barrell (2011) and Golledge et al. (2012). Inset: Modelled ice thickness and extent by Golledge et al. (2012) and extent mapped by Barrell (2011) for the Rakaia Valley. estimating contemporary ice thickness (Linsbauer et al., 2012; applied a topography driven model to produce a new estimate of James and Carrivick, 2016) and palaeo-ice thickness (Pellitero et al., distributed LGM ice thickness. Our approach is similar to that 2016). With the Southern Alps presenting excellent input datasets described by Pellitero et al. (2016) and in effect a reverse of the for LGM ice thickness reconstruction in this manner (high resolu- VOLTA contemporary ice thickness model developed by James and tion DEMs and well constrained down-valley ice limits), and with Carrivick (2016). As such the model is hereafter referred to as climate driven models currently unable to resolve known ice limits REVOLTA (Reconstruction of Volume and Topography Automation). in some catchments (i.e. Golledge et al., 2012), we developed and Using this approach, the aim of this study is to reconstruct the 22 W.H.M. James et al. / Quaternary Science Reviews 219 (2019) 20e35 LGM distributed ice thickness across the Southern Alps of New bathymetric dataset (Mitchell et al., 2012) and these data were Zealand to help improve our knowledge of glaciological and asso- appended to the existing DEM. To create a seamless dataset, the ciated climatic conditions during the LGM in the Southern Hemi- bathymetry was resampled to the resolution of the land surface sphere. Being far from the centres of Northern Hemisphere (8 m) and merged. glaciation, research in New Zealand provides the potential to examine the climatic effects of changes in Northern Hemisphere ice 2.1.3. Contemporary lakes sheets on Southern Hemisphere climate, as well as events of origin Whilst palaeoglaciers extended past the contemporary coast- in the Southern Hemisphere (Shulmeister et al., 2019). line, they also occupied areas where contemporary lakes now exist, for which standard DEMs represent the water surface level and not 2. Methods: a framework for reconstructing distributed ice the underlying bathymetry, thus obscuring the former glacier bed thickness topography. Substantial lakes inboard of LGM moraine sequences of the Southern Alps are over 450 m deep (e.g. Irwin, 1980), high- REVOLTA initially calculates the surface profiles of former gla- lighting the importance of considering their bathymetry. Many of ciers along a network of centrelines using an exact solution of a these lakes developed at the end of the LGM and were in contact ‘perfect plasticity’ approach. Ice thickness values are iteratively with a calving ice margin (Sutherland et al., 2019). calculated along each centreline, starting at the former terminus To produce a DEM more representative of LGM conditions, the position. A ‘nearest neighbour’ routine is used in conjunction with water depth of major lakes within the model domain was sub- the DEM to convert the centreline thickness points into a 3D tracted from the initial DEM. Each map was georeferenced, with distributed thickness. REVOLTA expands on the 2D only model water depth contours ranging in interval between 5 m and 100 m presented by Benn and Hulton (2010) and is similar in nature to digitized. Bathymetry was adjusted to the lake level of the DEM Pellitero et al. (2016). A schematic diagram of the REVOLTA before a gridded surface was interpolated using the hydrologically framework is shown in Fig.